Johann Joachim Winckelmann (German art historian and archaeologist) Add a review

Johann Joachim Winckelmann (US: VINK-əl-mahn; German: [ˈjoːhan ˈjoːaxɪm ˈvɪŋkl̩man]; 9 December 1717 – 8 June 1768) was a German art historian and archaeologist. He was a pioneering Hellenist who first articulated the differences between Greek, Greco-Roman and Roman art. "The prophet and founding hero of modern archaeology", Winckelmann was one of the founders of scientific archaeology and first applied the categories of style on a large, systematic basis to the history of art. Many consider him the father of the discipline of art history. He was one of the first to separate Greek art into periods and time classifications.

He had a decisive influence on the rise of the Neoclassical movement during the late 18th century. His writings influenced not only a new science of archaeology and art history but Western painting, sculpture, literature and even philosophy. Winckelmann's History of Ancient Art (1764) was one of the first books written in German to become a classic of European literature. His subsequent influence on Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Hölderlin, Heinrich Heine, Friedrich Nietzsche, Stefan George and Oswald Spengler has been provocatively called "the Tyranny of Greece over Germany".

Winckelmann maintained frequent correspondence with close male friends. He was frequently reflecting on male friendship through the lens of classical Greek ideals. In a 1752 letter, he expressed a great admiration for Frederick the Great as a "divine monarch" and praised Potsdam as a modern revival of "Athens and Sparta". Subsequent biographers and art historians—including Berthold Vallentin in his 1931 biography—have analyzed the presence of homoerotic themes and classical male friendship or männliche Liebe in his private letters. Winckelman's letters and aesthetic writings were celebrated by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe who understood them through a Platonic lens in his 1805 memorial essay Winckelmann und sein Jahrhundert.

In his major work, Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums or The History of Ancient Art (1764), Winckelmann acknowledged classical literary evidence (such as Plato) indicating that ancient Greek sculptures were originally painted. Despite this awareness, he regarded color as secondary to line, outline, and design (Zeichnung). Winckelmann argued that white marble was optically superior for revealing form, writing that "color contributes to beauty, but it is not beauty itself" and that white surfaces reflect the greatest number of light rays.